Anyone who has ever dated me knows I’m somewhat flexible on gender roles. For instance, when it comes to something like cooking, my woman doesn’t have to be the one in the kitchen. I love to cook all the time, probably more than most women I’ve dated, so it’s nothing for me to put on an apron and an oven mitt, talking about “Dinner’s ready!” I also enjoy a woman who makes more money than me, especially if she doesn’t have kids because financially stable women always get me nice shoes. I’m kidding about that last one. Sort of. But there are some moments when I do wish a woman was, well, more like a woman, or she treated me more like a man. I’m not talking about things like calling me the b-word or saying things like, “Man up!” I would never tolerate such talk. What I’m talking about are emasculating moments that are a little more subtle, the times when it wasn’t a woman’s intent to make me feel less like a man, but she did it anyway. Here are five of those moments.

I enjoy Buffalo wings just like the next man. Also on the list, spicy chips, spicy salsa, and some popcorn with some hot sauce on it. Pretty much, if it’s spicy, I’m eating it. But ever date a woman who really, really likes spicy food? I have, and there’s always a moment in the dating cycle where she is going to see my love for spicy food and raise it up to some hazardous level. Like the time a girl and I went to go get some Buffalo wings at a sports bar. Me? I was content with getting an order of the hot wings. Her? She wanted to get the wings that involved signing waivers, ridding the restaurant of any responsibility should something bad happen to a customer as a result of eating them. Luckily, I won a heated competition of Rock/Paper/Scissors and we ordered the hot wings, but the emasculation still came in the form of my four cups of water to her one.

One day, somebody needs to do a scientific study on why women like their shower and bath water so fucking hot. Any time I try to do the romantic thing by joining a woman I’m dating for a shower I’m spending half the time secretly trying to turn up the cold water knob, hoping she won’t notice. If it’s a bath, I have to count to ten before I take a full plunge into this body of water from which I see steam rising, because I just know the minute I plop down, my testicles are getting singed. And of course I count to ten in my head so she can’t hear me. And of course I act like the water’s just fine.

It’s not so much the act of grabbing or smacking that makes me feel less like a man. It’s really the rejection of it whenever she does it out in public. No man ever sounds like a man when he says, “Quit grabbing my ass!” As far as the stares I get from a woman whenever I’m wearing a pair of dress pants, it’s almost enough to make me stop doing the same to a woman. Not quite, but almost. SHE THOROUGHLY BREAKS DOWN GAMES. There is the type of woman who is into sports and doesn’t need me to explain something every five minutes in order to follow the game, and then there’s this type of woman: “All I’m saying is our team shouldn’t of punted on that last series.We should’ve gone for it. I know it’s 4th and 2, but we had the defense on their heels. Meanwhile, our special teams have been playing horribly all season, what made him think this was going to be any different? It was gut check time, and now it’s clear our coach has no guts.” This type of woman is special, but I don’t know if she’s special to me. SHE FIXES SOMETHING I CAN’T. Let the record show, I am not the handiest of men, but for the fairer sex I have changed plenty of flat tires, installed a ceiling fan, and assembled a few pieces of furniture in my lifetime. But every once in a while, in my efforts to do something like keep a hanging picture from falling or opening up a jammed drawer, there has been some woman behind me who says, “Move. Let me do this.” And she does it. Easily. Damn her.